@prjohn thanks for the article. But I feel a touch of bias. I’m sure I’m biased too. 
But we need to read articles from the central electric network management organisation who do have plans in place to green UK energy (not just England or Scotland - that is the point of a network). 
The UK has done a good job in de-carbonising electric production. More to be done. If each of us insist on buying green energy it drives the market to install more capacity and reduce our dependence on gas from elsewhere, which seems to be the negative argument in the article. 
I will start a new thread about personal decarbonisation 

Posted by: @julianc

@editor thanks Mars. Can you share the source of “verified carbon emissions factor”. I don’t know what that means. Does it take into account the energy required to create the H2 to hydrogenate the veg oil?  I struggle with the concept of this being a “green fuel” because of all the chemical processes required to make it. I buy my electric from Octopus who are a 100% green electric supplier. If we all purchased green electric then it would increase demand and drive the market to install more. Thus we buy less gas and fossil fuels. A positive circle.
I will look at buying my energy from Ripple, and be a part owner of a wind turbine to drive my carbon footprint down.   

The carbon emissions factor is from the government's Standard Assessment Procedure for Energy Rating of Dwellings (SAP 10.2)

I don't profess to be an energy expert, but what has been explained to us is that green tariffs, from Octopus or anyone else, are just tokens that those companies buy. The crazy thing is that they can buy these tokens/credits from Europe too to allow them to market their tariffs as green. So when the wind isn't blowing in the UK, the grid is propped up by gas so the electricity that is powering your heat pump and car is full of CO2 emissions. 

I'm @derek-m will be able to offer a lot more insights. 

Jon Fletcher, CEO if Big Clean Switch discussed this in this interview – skip to 14:30 mark:

Posted by: @julianc

@editor thanks Mars. Can you share the source of “verified carbon emissions factor”. I don’t know what that means. Does it take into account the energy required to create the H2 to hydrogenate the veg oil?  I struggle with the concept of this being a “green fuel” because of all the chemical processes required to make it. I buy my electric from Octopus who are a 100% green electric supplier. If we all purchased green electric then it would increase demand and drive the market to install more. Thus we buy less gas and fossil fuels. A positive circle.
I will look at buying my energy from Ripple, and be a part owner of a wind turbine to drive my carbon footprint down.   

Hi Julian,

Whilst you are be commended for doing your bit to reduce your carbon emissions, I would question that any electricity provider can actually supply 100% green electricity, it is not physically possible. Where do Octopus and the other providers of 'green' electricity actually source their supply, when there are occasions when renewable generation is only providing 4% of demand?

I appreciate that you have heavily invested in electrification, so as you state are somewhat biased, but I doubt that having more people requesting green generation will actually bring down the price, in fact I suspect the opposite may be the case. The companies that build the wind farms and lay the undersea cables only do so if they are going to make an adequate ROI for their investors.

You correctly questioned the energy use associated with the production of HVO, but wind farm electricity also has energy use associated with its production, so therefore cannot be claimed to be 100% green.

The daily peak electricity demand at the moment is around 45 GW, I dread to think what it would be if all the gas boilers where replaced with heat pumps and all the ICE vehicles were replaced with EV's. How many wind farms do you think would be required to meet demand and who do you think would be willing to pay for them? It is only by exploring all the alternative energy sources, and having a mix of generation and storage capacity, created by 'joined up thinking', will we not only be able to reduce carbon emissions, but do so at reasonable cost.

I afraid I'm not holding my breath on that one.

@derek-m battery storage is the answer. Vehicle to grid (V2G) connected to home EVs will balance the demand. 
I have a 73kWh battery in my garage that does nothing for 90% of the time. It could run all my home needs for two days. 
Home electric demand is actually going down as more efficient appliances are installed. 
Smart grids will help to balance. 
HVO has its place in maybe large industrial processes but I’m not convinced about home use. 
I disagree with your point about market ROI. There is money to be made in wind farms and solar and tidal as costs reduce. Costs of producing a kWh of electric from eco sources is far cheaper than from a fossil fuel source - see Fully Charged YouTube site. 

@editor so I’d seen this vid prior to your link. I’m with Octopus, one of Big Clean Switch green energy suppliers. Tick. And my tariff is lower than most. Tick tick. I recognise your point currently the grid is “propped up by gas” when the wind doesn’t blow. But through using green suppliers, as individuals, multiplied by millions of consumers we can drive the market to be more green and burn less fossil fuels. 
So my point is HVO is just a crutch on the way to full decarbonised energy future. Like a plug in hybrid electric vehicle is to a full EV. 
It might have a place for a few people, but full electrictrification (sp?) has to be the most eco answer. 

Posted by: @julianc

@derek-m battery storage is the answer. Vehicle to grid (V2G) connected to home EVs will balance the demand. 
I have a 73kWh battery in my garage that does nothing for 90% of the time. It could run all my home needs for two days. 
Home electric demand is actually going down as more efficient appliances are installed. 
Smart grids will help to balance. 
HVO has its place in maybe large industrial processes but I’m not convinced about home use. 
I disagree with your point about market ROI. There is money to be made in wind farms and solar and tidal as costs reduce. Costs of producing a kWh of electric from eco sources is far cheaper than from a fossil fuel source - see Fully Charged YouTube site. 

Hi Julian,

You are correct that V2G will go some way to help balance the grid, but where is the energy to charge the EV's to come from? At lowest demand, in the early hours of this morning, there was still almost twice as much generation from gas fired power plants than wind farms. Adding more EV's and heat pumps at the moment will just increase the gas burn.

Posted by: @julianc

@editor so I’d seen this vid prior to your link. I’m with Octopus, one of Big Clean Switch green energy suppliers. Tick. And my tariff is lower than most. Tick tick. I recognise your point currently the grid is “propped up by gas” when the wind doesn’t blow. But through using green suppliers, as individuals, multiplied by millions of consumers we can drive the market to be more green and burn less fossil fuels. 
So my point is HVO is just a crutch on the way to full decarbonised energy future. Like a plug in hybrid electric vehicle is to a full EV. 
It might have a place for a few people, but full electrictrification (sp?) has to be the most eco answer. 

Hi Julian,

I'm afraid that the grid is not being propped up by gas when the wind doesn't blow, the majority of generation is provided by gas on most days. Today the grid is actually being propped up by coal fired generation, that is the true state of affairs.

Uk energy production by region. You can check how much gas or wind is being used in your region.

https://electricityproduction.uk/in/scotland/

I'm with @Derek-m on this one, and particularly his comment about the need for a bit of "joined-up thinking". There is currently no single renewable energy generating technology which, even if implemented as freely as possible, could service all the energy needs to allow us to bring our carbon footprint to zero. Battery storage is great for disconnecting energy use from time of creation, but the energy still needs to be produced to start with.

At the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious, the elephant in the room is energy use, not energy production. Look at the long term graphs of energy use per head capita and the line is rather a logarithmic one. Some countries - UK included - have been seeing a small drop since 1965, but making more efficient use of energy is a sticking plaster compared with reducing our basic need to consume energy in the first place. Getting on a really efficient electric aeroplane for our holidays will never be as environmentally friendly as holidaying closer to home and not getting on the plane at all.

Do I have the answers to this? No. If I did, I'd be getting in the public eye all I could, influencing my socks off. However, joining up the creative ideas of how to generate energy renewably with creative ideas of how to reduce our need to consume energy would be a good start.

@derek-m I think I haven’t explained my point well. As one person, I can only do my bit to drive down my carbon footprint. Likewise everyone here. Insulate. Reduce your flow temperature to improve your efficiency. Move to ASHP as you can afford. The UK has done a good job over the past 10 years to decarbonise electric production. More to do. I can only influence switching off coal fire power stations and reducing gas usage by purchasing green electric. Seek ways to reduce my carbon footprint. 
I do not see how HVO helps this compared to full electric solution.

Agree with Dennis point about electric planes and flying vs staying at home.  Energy saving is key.  Circular economy is key.  

I think it is down to each of us to do our bit to reduce our carbon footprint whilst encouraging others to do their bit too.

Posted by: @julianc

@derek-m I think I haven’t explained my point well. As one person, I can only do my bit to drive down my carbon footprint. Likewise everyone here. Insulate. Reduce your flow temperature to improve your efficiency. Move to ASHP as you can afford. The UK has done a good job over the past 10 years to decarbonise electric production. More to do. I can only influence switching off coal fire power stations and reducing gas usage by purchasing green electric. Seek ways to reduce my carbon footprint. 
I do not see how HVO helps this compared to full electric solution.

Agree with Dennis point about electric planes and flying vs staying at home.  Energy saving is key.  Circular economy is key.  

I think it is down to each of us to do our bit to reduce our carbon footprint whilst encouraging others to do their bit too.

 

---

Hi Julian,

I obviously didn't make my point clearly. By purchasing allegedly green electric, does not actually produce any green electric. The provider merely purchases more offset credits on the market, which in turn pushes up the price of such credits, hence costing the consumer more.

The shutting down of most of the coal fired power stations along with some of the nuclear ones, has played into the hands of the gas suppliers, since we are now very much dependent upon gas fired power generation, and will be for quite a number of years to come. Wishing that we had more renewable generation will not make it happen overnight, there should have been much better planning of how best to achieve the transition from fossil fuels.

I fully agree about reducing energy consumption, which if you read my previous posts would start with improved insulation and draft proofing. Making best use of any solar energy available is a further way of reducing consumption. Unfortunately it would appear that many of us on the forum are in the minority. Whilst walking with my wife through our village the other evening, I was appalled by the number of houses now sporting the new fad of outside wall lights, which are often switched on 24/7.

HVO is never going to be a major fuel source, but can be useful in helping those living in the more remote areas, and having an oil fired boiler, to try to reduce their carbon footprint.

Posted by: @julianc

...

I do not see how HVO helps this compared to full electric solution.

...

It's clear that HVO contains carbon and that burning it will release that back into the atmosphere. However, given its starting point is oil from a recent crop, and that even then it's only recycling that which has already been wasted, it's not unreasonable to regard it as carbon neutral; the crop fixes the carbon, the crop is used for culinary purposes, the waste is burned and releases the carbon back into the atmosphere.

The gold standard for resolving the global environmental problem we're facing is any form of energy production that doesn't release carbon; in effect, any carbon sink. However, we have very little time to fix the problem and we run the very real risk of doing nothing for fear of not picking the perfect solution. HVO, amongst other biofuels, represents a significant improvement in its carbon footprint compared with fossil fuels. If that buys us all time to put in place long term solutions it'll be serving its purpose.